Despite the development of sophisticated and powerful earthmoving machinery it remains a time consuming and labor intensive chore to recontour the topography of a large plot of land, or to otherwise alter the geography of a work site such as a construction area, mine, road or the like. Such operations sometimes involve the necessity of a survey which is currently carried out using line of sight optical instruments or other static, point-by-point measuring techniques to obtain the coordinates of a large number of points over the work site and to thereafter construct a three-dimensional model of the site. From the survey an architectural plan or target geography is developed. Thereafter the site is carefully marked with stakes of various colors to provide physical cues to the operator of geography altering machinery such as a track-type tractor as to how the machine should be operated to transform the work site from the original to the desired state. Only the most skillful and experienced operators can achieve efficiency in recontouring a large land site, such difficulty being due in part to the absence of large scale as well as detailed information as to the progress being made in the revision of the site.
As a result most projects involving the alteration of the geography of large work sites are time consuming and labor intensive in the requirements for skilled personnel and large crews to direct the operation of earthmoving machinery and the like.
Additionally, for knowledge of the degree to which the original site geography has been brought into conformity with the desired geography, the operation is often interrupted while a survey crew verifies the amount of progress to date and manually updates the staking and marking of the site, as well as the site model. Between these occasional verifications the machinery operators and supervisors have no truly accurate way to measure their real time progress.